A decade on from the release of his mesmerising Recomposed album, trailblazing composer Max Richter returns to the sound world of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Recorded with violinist Elena Urioste and the musicians of Chineke! Orchestra, The New Four Seasons sees Richter create a new version of his Recomposed score for period instruments – using gut strings and vintage synthesisers to create a “grittier, more punk rock sound”.
Building on the musical material of the first record, Voices 2 extends the musical language into a purely instrumental and abstract direction. Where the first part of the project is very focused on the text of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, the 2nd part opens up a musical space to let these words and ideas sink in.
The pop-minimalist music of Max Richter has been gaining followers beyond his native Germany and his residence of Britain thanks to some highly successful soundtracks and energetic promotion by the Deutsche Grammophon label, which recorded Exiles in 2019 and released it in 2021. Here, he is interpreted by the Baltic Sea Philharmonic and its conductor, Kristjan Järvi. Richter selected the group himself, and it was a good choice. The Baltic musicians have plenty of experience with the glassy, precise textures of minimalism, and they deliver accomplished readings. Exiles comprises 18 short sections with a simple pulse, slightly modifying – in classic minimalist fashion – a pattern laid out at the beginning.
Max Richter’s landmark 8.5 hour work SLEEP in an abrdiged 90 min. version. The SLEEP project explores new ways for music and consciousness to interact, a “personal lullaby for a frenetic world…a manifesto for a slower pace of existence.”
Max Richter’s ninth solo album - the first to be written and recorded at his serene new studio in rural Oxfordshire - is a fleeting self-portrait of a musician in constant motion. In A Landscape is a record about “reconciling polarities”, as Richter puts it, bringing together the electronic and the acoustic, the human and the natural world, the big questions of life and the quiet pleasures of living.
Max Richter’s ninth solo album - the first to be written and recorded at his serene new studio in rural Oxfordshire - is a fleeting self-portrait of a musician in constant motion. In A Landscape is a record about “reconciling polarities”, as Richter puts it, bringing together the electronic and the acoustic, the human and the natural world, the big questions of life and the quiet pleasures of living.
An ensemble that attracts rave reviews and sell-out crowds at prestigious venues everywhere from Vienna to New York, the sensational SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet present their first Deutsche Grammophon album. Featuring inventive arrangements of music by composers from Dowland to Peter Gregson, as well as Guillermo Lago's "Sarajevo," a sax quartet original.